Editor | Hao Fangzhou

Editor | Hao Fangzhou

Referring to the history of Internet development, we know what it means to occupy a seat on the early underlying operating system track. Similarly, since the blockchain technology entered the growth stage, the public chain as the underlying infrastructure has become a highly competitive field.

2018 is the tenth anniversary of the birth of the first-generation public chain, and is also called the "first year of the public chain" by many people. A group of public chains that want to lead the blockchain into the "3.0 era" regard TPS as the biggest pain point of "blockchain 2.0". Fragmentation, Plasma, Casper, and various consensus mechanisms are combined to form different expansion schemes, trying to find the optimal solution to break through the "impossible triangle". There are also teams trying to deduce the evolution direction of technology from the real needs of business scenarios, and adjust the underlying network architecture (for example, equipped with Layer 2). Some people even question whether the current public chain has embarked on the wrong path, thinking that the blockchain itself is not designed for general computing, and there is no need to benchmark everything against the Internet.

No matter where the sword is pointed, this year we have indeed witnessed many public chains (with the blessing of capital) launch testnets and mainnets, operate developer and user communities, and vigorously build ecology. However, under the dilemma that the number of public chains exceeds that of developers, and the digital currency has entered the "long bear" situation, the public chains with weak hematopoietic capabilities have undergone a round of major reshuffle.

Fortunately, there are still a few public chain teams with strong cash flow and technical capabilities in the market, who regard the bear market as an opportunity to overtake and prepare for the next wave of opportunities.

Recently, Odaily once again invited Xu Yiji, founder of Nebulas, Li Jun, founder of Ontology, Dong Xinshu, CEO of Zilliqa, Zhou Qi, founder of QuarkChain, Lu Guoning, co-founder of Nervos, Ma Haobo, founder of aelf, Yuan Yuming, CEO of Huobi China , using five questions and five answers to take stock of the public chain in the past year and look forward to the future. The following is the essence of the edited question and answer, enjoy~

Q1. In 2018, what impressed you the most in the "public chain world"? What impact has this incident had on people's perception of blockchain?

Li Jun:From the end of last year to the end of this year, the public chain projects have grown from thousands of horses to the top. This year, there are very few public chains that have actually launched the main network and are operating well.

Originally, I thought that the galloping situation of public chain projects would last for two to three years, but because of the sudden bear market, the elimination of public chains has accelerated. However, it is only the beginning of the marathon of the public chain.

Dong Xinshu:cycle:

cycle:Lu Guoning:

Lu Guoning:The biggest and most far-reaching impact on the "public chain" this year is the market environment. In 2017, the blockchain concept and market became popular, attracting the attention of a large number of developers from the traditional IT field and the Internet field. Blockchain technology activities, topics, and training are hot. However, starting from the second half of 2018, we have clearly observed that the popularity of technology has continued to decline, and even recent very important technological developments are no longer as widely concerned as before.

The development of blockchain technology is directly related to the market environment, which is a characteristic of this industry. We believe that the rapid development of the industry is inseparable from a thriving developer community and a large number of potential developers willing to switch to the blockchain technology field. Due to market factors, many start-up teams in the blockchain have opted out, and teams that have previously paid attention to and looked for opportunities to participate are discouraged. These are the common status quo at the moment.

Ma Haobo:After 2013 and 2014, VCs refocused on the blockchain in 2017 and 2018, and some influential people also began to pay attention to the blockchain.

Yuan Yuming:For the public chain represented by EOS, after the TPS broke through the thousand-digit level, there was a sharp increase in the amount of data. However, a large amount of data came from simple games, and the expected large-scale practical applications did not appear.

This incident triggered my thinking about the real use value of the public chain. An approximate assumption can be made: In the past, we used Visa's centralized server to record each transaction. In order to achieve "decentralization", referring to the EOS model, we need at least 21 equivalent servers to do the same thing, so the cost The cost can also be approximately 21 times that of the previous ones, so the value of the recorded data will be very high. A large amount of simple game process data has no such value, which means that we pay high value but get low value results. This price/performance ratio is very unreasonable.

In short, the use of blockchain technology should also be layered to record the value of data, and different layers correspond to different data values. Everyone is currently paying too much attention to technological realization or breakthroughs, but ignores the application scenarios of blockchains with different positioning for different value data. ; The second is on the alliance chain, which is more data that needs to be notarized between the alliances; the private chain can basically be equivalent to the traditional centralized server, endorsed by credit, and technically integrated into the blockchain technology.

Q2. Compared with the history of Internet development, what role do you think the public chain plays in the blockchain world? What stage are you in now?

Xu Yiji:The 2018 of the blockchain is the same as the price of Bitcoin. It has experienced a spring, summer, autumn and winter. The spring and summer are very short, and the autumn and winter are very long. The entire industry has also gone from frenzy to calm, from expansion to contraction.

Li Jun:The public chain plays the mainstay role in the blockchain world. The consortium chain can meet the needs of local scope and local stage, but it will eventually transition to the public chain.

Dong Xinshu:cycle:

cycle:Lu Guoning:

Lu Guoning:The blockchain and the Internet have boundaries, but they also communicate with each other, complementing and competing with each other.

Going back to 5 years ago, or even earlier, the blockchain and its ecology did not exist. After Bitcoin became popular, we started exploring the potential of peer-to-peer electronic cash systems and distributed ledgers. After the popularity of Ethereum, we began to think about what kind of prosperous ecology that decentralized applications based on smart contracts can bring us.

From Bitcoin, Ethereum, to EOS, what we see is that people have opened up a new territory that did not exist outside the Internet, just like discovering a new continent. Where the boundaries of this territory still need to be explored. The business ecology that can be established in this territory is still in the early stage but has great potential. Therefore, the new field of blockchain and the Internet must be interconnected, complementary and competitive. In this new field, new business models, new products, and new values ​​will be born to compete with the Internet, and at the same time stimulate the accelerated evolution of the Internet environment.

Ma Haobo:The public chain is the infrastructure of the blockchain. The entire industry is still in a very early stage, and the industry has not yet had such a big demand. Just like before e-commerce on the Internet came out, the demand for cloud computing was not so strong.

The current blockchain is very similar to the Internet in 2000. At that time, everyone's perception of the Internet was QQ, portals, and chat rooms. Let's look at the current blockchain, that is, exchanges, ICOs, encrypted cats and gaming applications.

Yuan Yuming:The public chain will be the infrastructure of Web 3.0. Web1.0 provides the user's reading requirements, and everything can be obtained through active query; Web2.0 provides the user's interaction requirements, and users can also interact and give feedback, but all data is obtained through oligopolistic enterprises. The server stores records, and users will also feel that their privacy is being monitored; Web3.0 will provide a flatter interactive mode, and all data exchanges will be based on a distributed network, distributed and stored in the network in an encrypted form, rather than mastered In oligopolistic enterprises, individual privacy will be fully guaranteed.

Of course, the definition of the public chain at that time may be very different from the current definition. The current public chain defined by the BTC payment type as 1.0 and the ETH smart contract as 2.0 is only the 0.1 stage of this ecology, which is a very early technology. Stepping forward, there is still a long way to go, and there is a lot of room for development.

Q3. Can you rank the top three among expansion, attracting developers, community operation, ecological layout, security, cash flow (or what do you think is the most important point for a public chain)?

Li Jun:Technology (scaling is a part of technology) determines how far it can go and how to better serve developers. In terms of cash flow, whether it is the development of the community or technology, it needs to be supported by a good economic model, such as incentives for nodes and developers. This cash flow is not only the cash flow of the core team, but also allows the entire ecosystem to operate in a long-term, healthy and self-circulating manner.

Dong Xinshu:cycle:

cycle:Security, community involvement, scalability. The degree of community participation is a relatively clear manifestation of decentralization. For the blockchain, it requires many people to participate, maintain the network and benefit from it. It is a bit similar to TV stations and Internet celebrities. Now Internet celebrities can become popular even if they are not on TV stations, and they can also attract traffic, and finally form an Internet celebrity economy.

Lu Guoning:

Lu Guoning:Security, core team/foundation, developer/user community.

Safety always comes first and no compromises can be made. The core development team and the foundation also play a big role in promoting and making technical decisions in the early stages of development. Long-term development depends on the developer community and user community.

Ma Haobo:The first is the ease of use of the public chain, that is, it is friendly enough for C-side users and simple enough for B-side developers. These two points are very core things of the public chain.

The second is whether the public chain can provide a stable and efficient operating environment when the number of users increases. When developers choose an ecology, they should not just look at which ecology has more users, such as Bitcoin has more users, but the effect of Bitcoin payment before me was not good. I hope that developers in the industry will come in and develop DAPPs. For example, Ma Yun’s Taobao on the blockchain must be much stronger than people in the blockchain, because Ma Yun understands the logic of selling goods, and people in the blockchain may not understand this. logic.

Yuan Yuming:The positioning of the public chain itself, value data, will be the first. The remaining few belong to the same concept, enough developers also means enough ecological layout and security.

Q4. What is the biggest bottleneck encountered by public chain projects now?

Li Jun:The public chain is currently being applied, but the actual breakthrough is not yet obvious. The development of the public chain is not only a technical issue, but also business scenarios, business mechanism design and expansion in different industries. These are very difficult, and there are many challenges. It is necessary to design new industry rules and new business processes in different industries before applying blockchain technology.

Dong Xinshu:The biggest bottleneck is how the public chain penetrates into the existing business and how to balance the interests of all parties. This is a non-technical thing. I think this is the biggest challenge and our biggest opportunity.

cycle:

cycle:Lu Guoning:

Lu Guoning:Everyone agrees that the biggest bottleneck of the public chain is performance, but I think it is the inconsistency between the development progress of the next generation solution and market expectations.

In 2018, we saw that EOS improved transaction performance by two orders of magnitude compared to Ethereum, leading the explosion of blockchain game applications. However, the performance improvement of two orders of magnitude is not enough to support the prosperous encrypted economic ecology with various types of DAPPs we hope.

The public chain projects currently under development all aim to ensure more security and higher performance to support more applications and users. The technical directions adopted by each company are different. Whether this goal can be achieved will take time and delivery to the market to verify .

Ma Haobo:The first is that the entry threshold for users is too high. It needs to pay fees to the public chain, and unlike WeChat, everyone will use it once they see it. The blockchain needs to hide some CPU-like concepts in the background. For example, if the application service provider pays directly to the public chain, it will effectively prevent DDoS behavior and be more user-friendly.

The second is poor performance and applications interfering with each other. For example, the TPS of Ethereum is low, and resources are not isolated from each other. At that time, the Ethercat game caused the congestion of Ethereum, which also affected other applications on Ethereum.

Yuan Yuming:At present, the bottleneck of the public chain project lies in the ecological construction and cooperation of the blockchain. For example, ETH is a public chain with high security. It needs the cooperation of Layer 2 with strong scalability and distributed storage for storage. Full ecological technology coverage, the blockchain public chain world does not necessarily need many public chains, but everyone needs to expand hard requirements in a safe ecology, the effect is far greater than fork a so-called new public chain, these are pseudo-improvement.

Q5. What changes and trends may there be in the public chain and blockchain world in 2019?

Xu Yiji:The 2018 public chain is exclusive, and the 2019 public chain should be inclusive and win-win. Because I think that no public chain can succeed alone. As the underlying infrastructure of the blockchain, there are still too many places worthy of mutual discussion, learning and improvement. More attention should be paid to the blockchain technology itself, that is, the interaction and impact of a native distributed data-based confirmation of rights.

Looking forward to blockchain 2019, from the perspective of Nebulas, the essence of blockchain has not changed, that is, the potential impact and changes of the "autonomous data element network" brought about by distributed technology on future life. It is the expectation that technology will bring people a better life in the future. This expectation requires all blockchain practitioners to work hard and break through!

Li Jun:In 2019, the blockchain will be more pragmatic in terms of technology, business, investment, etc., and the blockchain will be partially implemented in terms of entities. At least the top ten public chains will gradually appear.

Dong Xinshu:cycle:

cycle:Lu Guoning:

Lu Guoning:Affected by market factors, the entire industry is now in a trough and a downward channel, and there is no sign of improvement in the first half of 2019. This is a test for a good team. Only by persisting until the next outlet can we seize the opportunities and dividends of industry development.

However, we have also seen that in the wave from 2017 to 2018, a group of project teams from the academic field, especially the head of the cryptography field, gained unprecedented attention and development opportunities, and many cutting-edge technologies and projects obtained capital And institutional support, there are sufficient resources to promote technical research and development, including better cryptography, signature algorithms, and privacy algorithms. The development of the underlying technology of the blockchain will see more possibilities in 2019.

Ma Haobo:In 2019, there will be a round of shuffling of blockchain projects; a bear market will eliminate a number of companies; and some DAPPs will appear.

For the public chain, there will not be as many new public chain projects in 2019 as in 2018, and it will be more peaceful. In addition, I think the current blockchain needs to be broken by spoilers like Pinduoduo.

Yuan Yuming:In 2019, it is expected that sharding technology will be tested, cross-chain technology will be able to, and new privacy protection technology will also have new blood. What I expect to see is the landing test of distributed storage, not the protocol, but the consensus mechanism and economic mechanism that operate better.

The trend and change at the application level will be greater. The application of blockchain technology on the alliance chain will promote more industries to achieve organizational simplification and increase credibility. Everyone's understanding of blockchain and application requirements will be more subdivided. The compliance construction will be further improved, and related investment derivatives will also appear. The mobile phone application terminal will become the main entrance for the application of blockchain applications, such as Alipay based on blockchain technology, IoT and the game industry will also be the first to integrate with the region. A relatively good industry combined with block chain technology.

The process of a technology from geeks to the public is both a roller coaster and a marathon.

In 2018, both the encrypted economy and public opinion stimulated and boosted the influx of capital into the blockchain industry again. Behind the chaos is also a "true breakthrough" in technology. The bubble squeeze of the blockchain and the reshuffle of the public chain are not over yet. In 2019, the leading public chain will gradually emerge, and the application layer will also usher in new development.

Attached is "2018 Inventory of the Blockchain Field"

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Attached is "2018 Inventory of the Blockchain Field"